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Originally posted by arpa Reason for the answer to this thread...so what if a customer calls at 6pm on a Saturday night, you accepted the employment, and where told the conditions of employment before hiring, I hope.

I was not informed about the rotation schedule when I was brought in.
I am not paid anything for being on call, save for the hours I roll out to a call for.

If it were up to me, I would not schedule anyone to be an on call responder unless they wanted the overtime!
There are plenty of single techs working at various outfits who are more than earger to handle all the overtime they can find.
They simply do NOT have a life, so to speak.

Personally, I have a life.
My identity is NOT in what I do for a living. (you wouldnt know that by looking at my post count though)
I have others who are inter-dependant on me and myself on them.
We do things together both as family as well as extended family.

They were there for me before this job came along and they will be there for me looooong after this job goes away.
I cannot say that about service contractors.
They change some of their crew out like they change filling stations or cellular carriers.
Only dif being .... I dont hold any sort of contract with my employers.
I am simply there for as long as they want me. And once they perceive that I am no longer of value to them ...I am down the road looking elsewhere for employment.
I am simply a commodity to them. And until such time as I am "released" from my present responsibilities ...I will continue to be viewed as "flex-labor".

I am the one who must be flexible to their need for a mechanic.
I am the one who is sent out to do their work.
I am the one who is sent to deliver, fix, assist with whatever is considered neceessary for the company's interests.

And for this I get the use of a truck.
I get parts to install.
I get a Nextel/ cell.
I get a gas card.
I get a ladder, which no one else is willing to climb up anymore.
I get a recovery unit no one in the company can figure out how to use or is willing to carry on theri truck.
and I get a torch.

Everything else on the truck is mine.
The knowledge and experience is mine.

And I sell my time to the company at a rate which is 3/4 of what was agreed upon when I came on board.
And that was BEFORE I found out, on the sly, that there are no benefits with this outfit whatsoever!!!

Insurance, no.
uniforms, no
401K, no.
etc., no.

I do, however, find some of the people there interesting and even quite civil.
Friendly in fact. Some are even really and truly nice.
In all honesty, most of them are nice.

And much of the hands on work is actually interesting and holds my attention. The other half does not.

If I had another job to transition into, I would be there tomorrow.
This area is NOT a tech's market right now!

Employer's are very fickled here in Austin.

I am not here posting all this stuff to find a fix.
I am not here to put anyone down.
People do what they do for their own reasons. Good or bad.
And I cannot change that.
it's not my job, man.

I'm just lettin' off some steam around some people who know exactly what I am talking about.

and for those unfortunate enough to be consideirng entering this trade... this may just warn them enough to look elsewhere for a new carreer.

Originally posted by arpa For tying up over two days of one of your employees time yuo give $150. That is not even one days pay. Give your employee 1/2 time pay for every hour he has to be on call then you have a right to be offended if he complains. As someone else said you are only worried about your pocket book.
__________________
Hmm, if I wasn't worried about my pocket book, I wouldn't need any techs, as I wouldn't have any work for them.

Re-read my answer, I pay them $150.00 in cash, and if they go out on a call after hours, I pay them time and a half, no matter how many hours they have.

As others have stated, owner wise, it is my business, I assume all the risks, I gaurentee all my techs 40 hours a week, I pay the bills, etc, etc.
All my techs are happy with this arrangement, if not, they do not work for me, and they can start their own company.

I re-read your answer. It still says $150 to be on call, if there is no calls it still is only $150 and they have to stay around home and be prepaired to go in.

My job suports my life it is not lmy life. If my employeer wants to interupt my life I expected to be paid for the interuption, and not just a part days pay for Friday night-All day Saturday and Sunday.

If techs were paid enough standby pay to make it worthwhile, then you wouldn't see everyone trying to get out of it. Most people that call at 030 in the morning are usually Aholes anyway and even worse that early.
If you get too many of these kind of calls then maybe the tech to customer ratio is too big (and/or) the customer isn't paying enough for an after hours service call.

Originally posted by oil lp man If techs were paid enough standby pay to make it worthwhile, then you wouldn't see everyone trying to get out of it. Most people that call at 030 in the morning are usually Aholes anyway and even worse that early.
If you get too many of these kind of calls then maybe the tech to customer ratio is too big (and/or) the customer isn't paying enough for an after hours service call.

You hit a nail on the head. If customers were charged much more for after hours service, so called “emergency situation” would become just a plain inconvenience, that can wait till next day, or till Monday, if it happened during the weekend.

I will bet that the worse abusers are not home owners but renters who don’t pay service bill directly.
Another group would be owners of condominiums where service of heat and A/C is covered by their maintenance fees.

I get on-call one week once a month. It’s a drag but it is also part of the job.
I would like to be paid $150 in cash for carrying a beeper, like arpa’s techs.

The worst part of this deal is driving 15 miles in the city traffic for something that is caused by someone’s negligence or stupidity, or for something that is not an emergency at all.
Another thing is that your weekends are messed up. In the past I had to leave a church or movie theater and drive to work. Forget going to the restaurant for dinner, unless you are a gambler. Being called at 2 am just to be asked a question is not fun either. Lucky, if you can go back to sleep right away.

Don’t get me wrong. There are times of real trouble like fire, bad leaks or complete building blackout at night, but then you don’t mind responding to these situations because you know that they are real emergencies.

I think that employers have to pay more attention to this on-call part of doing business.
Their guidelines should be carefully balanced between profits and private life of their employees.

Originally posted by fitter33 Everyone knows being on call is part of the job.....if ya don't like it change professions...there are plenty of guys looking for a chance to take your spot.

There may be plenty of guys out there looking to take his spot with no insurance, no vacation pay, no 401K, etc., but are they guys or are they technicians. That's right, 95% of them are guys and not refrigeration and/or air conditioning techs.

Case in point. A "guy" the other day is working on a small split in a mall that I'm at comes over and says "look at these things, they don't even have any numbers on them". I look at them and see that it's 410a marked marked manifold guage set. I state this and he come back with "What's that?" Come to find out this "guy" went to TCI technical school(or something like that)and recieved his a/c - refrigeration diploma like 5 years ago. How deaf have you have had to be to not even hear about R-410a. Remember now that the guy is doing commercial a/c work so the "he's just a residential guy" won't fly here.

That is what is out there looking to take R-12's job. He can have it as far as I'm concerned.

Originally posted by fitter33 Everyone knows being on call is part of the job.....if ya don't like it change professions...there are plenty of guys looking for a chance to take your spot.

There may be plenty of guys out there looking to take his spot with no insurance, no vacation pay, no 401K, etc., but are they guys or are they technicians. That's right, 95% of them are guys and not refrigeration and/or air conditioning techs.

Case in point. A "guy" the other day is working on a small split in a mall that I'm at comes over and says "look at these things, they don't even have any numbers on them". I look at them and see that it's 410a marked marked manifold guage set. I state this and he come back with "What's that?" Come to find out this "guy" went to TCI technical school(or something like that)and recieved his a/c - refrigeration diploma like 5 years ago. How deaf have you have had to be to not even hear about R-410a. Remember now that the guy is doing commercial a/c work so the "he's just a residential guy" won't fly here.

That is what is out there looking to take R-12's job. He can have it as far as I'm concerned.

...Ron

When I say "guys" I was referring to techs, not apprentices...I kinda figured you would have known that.

As far as insurance, 401k...etc. I would never have taken a job in the first place without benefits....so I feel no sympathy....

I live 45 min. away from most of our stores.....I chose to live there so I can't whine about getting called out..

I only get $80 (taxable) for being on call for a weekend. We don't usually get many calls on the weekend, except for some computer rooms and similar things that can't wait.

But even these are better off waiting at least until the morning rather than having a tired tech out in the middle of the night. Waking someone up at 3:00 in the morning to run a service call, instead of letting him sleep another 3 hours, will probably not get the problem solved any quicker. In fact, it will probably make the problem worse.

Some of the worst disasters happen in the middle of the night. Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, Exxon Valdez, ect.

I personally have had some bad experiences working at night, and have made some mistakes that ended up turning a small problem into a bigger one.

One monday morning, after being on call for the weekend and not getting any calls, our bookeeper complained about paying us $80 for doing nothing. I told her you can keep your f-ing $80, take my name off the call list. Please!

the present company i work for pays dick for on call and they do commercial ref ac and resid

As far as I'm concerned they can shove their on call pgr right up where the sun never shines!

Why yes thats correct! to all you whom say I should get another job if I don't like on call, I bloody well did

As far as I'm concerned We should get one days 8 hrs pay for being on call for a week plus double bubble for going out at a 2 hr min
Yes I know thats 420 hrs pay an employer has to find. I say to you The employer YOU TAKE THE PAGER AND FILTER THE CALLS THEN. YOU WAKE UP AT 3AM TO ANSWER THE DRUNKEN STUPID QUESTIONS. YOU DECIDE WHAT CALLS CAN WAIT. AFTER ALL ITS YOUR BUSINESS YOUR RISK BLAH BLAH BLAH RIGHT?

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Arguing with some people is like wrestling a pig - eventually you realise the pig actually enjoys it